August 11, 2006

GOP Domestic Spying and "Trepidation"

by emptywheel

Amidst the hoopla about threats to America yesterday, a Walter Pincus story about a different kind of threat to America kind of fell through the cracks. Pincus reported that the top two officials of the Counterintelligence Field Activity, CIFA, abruptly announced their resignation (effective the end of the month). Justin Rood at TPMM managed to get a copy of the resignation email, which basically described how two guys decided to resign at precisely the same time.

For the past four years, I have been
privileged to serve as your Director and be part of the CIFA family. It
has been an honor to serve in that capacity. I am especially proud of
all of you and what you have accomplished for the CI Community, for the
overall CI mission, and for your co-workers here at CIFA.

Today, I want to share with you my decision to resign as Director
and retire from government service. My last day in the office will be
August 31. I did not make this decision without trepidation, but the
time is right to move on to the next phase of my career.

Mr. Hefferon has also decided to retire, after over 31 years of federal service.[my emphasis]

So were Burtt and Hefferon ousted, or are they getting out before the Democrats get subpoena power before the Cunningham scandal exposes some new abuse on privacy while the getting is good?

CIFA's Directorates

Before you answer that question, it's probably worth reviewing the story of CIFA more closely. First, here's a description of CIFA's activities, from an earlier Pincus story.

Its Directorate of Field Activities (DX) "assists in preserving the
most critical defense assets, disrupting adversaries and helping
control the intelligence domain," the fact sheet said. Those roles can
range from running roving patrols around military bases and facilities
to surveillance of potentially threatening people or organizations
inside the United States. The DX also provides "on-site, real time . .
. support in hostile areas worldwide to protect both U.S. and host
nation personnel from a variety of threats," the fact sheet said.

[snip]

Another
CIFA directorate, the Counterintelligence and Law Enforcement Center,
"identifies and assesses threats" to Defense personnel, operations and
infrastructure from "insider threats, foreign intelligence services,
terrorists, and other clandestine or covert entities," according to the
Pentagon.

CIFA manages the Pentagon database that includes Talon
reports, consisting of raw, unverified information picked up by the
military services on suspicious activities that could involve terrorist
threats. The Pentagon acknowledged last week that the Talon database
contained reports on peaceful civilian protests and demonstrations that
should have been purged long ago under Defense Department regulations.

A
third CIFA directorate, Behavioral Sciences, "has 20 psychologists and
a multimillion-dollar budget," and supports both "offensive and
defensive counterintelligence efforts," according to a government
biography of its director, S. Scott Shumate. Shumate was the chief
operational psychologist for the CIA's counterterrorism center until
2003. His group has also provided a "team of renowned forensic
psychologists [who] are engaged in risk assessments of the Guantanamo
Bay detainees," according to his biography.

CIFA's Chronology

And here are some relevant dates of which Pincus reminds us in yesterday's article and elsewhere:

September 2002, then Deputy Secretary of Defense for Counter-Intelligence Burtt (the guy who resigned yesterday) establishes CIFA to oversee counterintelligence units of the armed services; consulting on the new agency was James King, recently retired director of National Imagery and Mapping Agency and MZM vice president

Back when Nixon was spying on his enemies, he used the agencies of the
US government. He was using civil servants subject to congressional
oversight to do his dirty work. But the newfangled Republican party
learned in Iran-Contra that, if you outsource the dirty work far
enough, you're more likely to avoid the oversight that will lead to
discovery.

[snip]

So let me connect the dots here. Republican legislators have set up
this nifty scheme, whereby their buddies ply them with golf trips,
swank real estate deals, and prostitutes. In exchange for that booty,
they give their buddies contracts at Defense or Homeland Security or
CIA. Spying contracts. Under those spying contracts, the buddies spy on
American citizens, even funny bloggers and peaceniks. And although it
is known that these buddies are a little sloppy with the way they spy
on American citizens, they continue to get more work.

The core of the Cunningham scandal is a scheme whereby a big GOP donor and Bush pioneer helps the Pentagon set up a domestic spy agency. The apparently willful inaction of the committee that should exercise oversight over the agency (and remember, Goss headed the Committee when MZM got the big CIFA contracts) permits CIFA to expand greatly, awarding contracts with huge profit margins and staffing an agency with 70% contractors. And, it turns out, this domestic spy agency is spying on people--Quakers and liberal satiric bloggers--whom the GOP would consider their enemies.

They get to spy on us and make a huge profit.

The Gig Is Up?

All of this may shed some light on another of yesterday's forgotten stories, about the Dems on the House Intelligence Committee pushing to release the results of an investigation into their committee's role in the Cunningham scandal.

An internal congressional investigation has found that "major
breakdowns" in legislative controls enabled former Republican Rep.
Randy "Duke" Cunningham to use his position on the House Intelligence
Committee to steer classified government contracts to political
cronies, according to a memo distributed this week to Democrats on the
panel.

The memo accuses Republicans of backing out of an
agreement to subpoena Cunningham, and calls for the public release of a
20-page unclassified report documenting the findings of the
investigation.

[snip]

But the internal House probe has found a similar pattern of abuses in
contracts involving U.S. intelligence agencies — and includes language
describing cases in which the disgraced congressman pressured committee
aides to set aside secret funds for his associates, according to
congressional sources familiar with the investigation.

The
committee's report, which has not been released publicly, "provides
important details about how the committee's processes were abused to
accomplish Cunningham's illicit aims," Harman wrote in the memo, a copy
of which was obtained by the Los Angeles Times.

The panel's
report also "highlights some major breakdowns in the ability of our
committee to prevent the damage even after numerous 'red flags' were
raised."

[snip]

Republicans and Democrats are divided over how much of the
investigation's findings should be released. Senior aides say Stern has
completed a classified report that is nearly 50 pages long, as well as
a 20-page unclassified version.

In her memo, Harman said Democrats should push to have the full unclassified text released to the public.

"There
is no reason that our committee should be able to 'bury' any
unclassified facts about our committee's business, however unpleasant
or embarrassing," Harman said.

It remains to be seen whether Harman's pressure will be successful. I'm not holding my breath. But I would bet that, if the report is released, it will reveal that both Peter Hoekstra and Porter Goss allowed Cunningham's schemes to succeed.

I don't know why Director Burtt and Deputy Director Hefferon decided to retire suddenly. Were they pushed? Or can they simply read the tea-leaves?

Suffice it to say, the Republicans will probably add Jane Harman to the list of those Congressional Representatives whom GOP voters should fear ascending as Committee Chairs.